Locked-out U.S. Steel workers braved the cold and wind all day Sunday in a bid to prevent a ship transporting valuable steelmaking materials from leaving Hamilton Harbour.
But after 17 hours police convinced the workers to leave the bridge and let the ship pass.
About 25 workers holding flags and signs marched back-and-forth across the lift-bridge, preventing it from being raised and forcing the vessel, carrying about 20,000 tons of coke, to park about a kilometre out in the harbour from the demonstration. It first tried to get through at about 8 p.m. Sunday.
“We feel the coke belongs to us. It should be used here to make steel and we think (moving it out) is a provocation on U.S. Steel’s part,” Local 1005 president Rolf Gerstenberger said. “We don’t think it’s right that they just have us making coke and they just ship the coke out to other plants.”
Nine hundred Hamilton workers were locked out Nov. 7. The workers started protesting on the bridge at about 5 a.m. Sunday morning. Mayor Bob Bratina visited them later that night to show his support.
U.S. Steel Canada started shipping coke out of the city last month, and a Canada Steamship Lines vessel carrying the metallurgical coal left Hamilton Harbour for Nanticoke at the end of March. At that time, the union had sent out an urgent appeal to its members, asking them to gather at the Burlington Canal lift-bridge, but the ship was already gone.
Nothing should be moved from Hamilton while Ottawa and U.S. Steel are still in court, union leader Jake Lombardo said. “At the end of tonight, I hope that the federal government is listening.”
The union says U.S. Steel Canada is moving about 44,000 of 200,000 tons of coke stored in Hamilton.
THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
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